Love Thy Enemy
by Invader Ang
Summary: Bitter rivals Zim and Dib aren't as bitter as they used to be, though they still have problems. A window into their world reveals one's struggle to save the other from what appears to be certain death . ZADR. My first fic, please review c:
1. Chapter 1

Invader Zim – "Love Thy Enemy"

Chapter One

"Victory! Victory for ZIM!"

My superior battle cry rang out as I ran as fast as I could out of my nemesis' private quarters, waving a scrap of paper triumphantly gripped in my gloved, three-clawed hand. I raced down the nasty beast's hallway to the front door, grasping the handle and pulling it open. My adversary made little attempt to thwart my escape.

"Zim, gimme back my Spanish homework!" the human spat in confusion as he half-jogged, half-walked towards me, his hand outstretched. "I need that for tomorrow!"

"Nonsense!" I screeched, pulling the paper away and stepping outside. "This is a secret coded message! You are simply trying to trick me with one of your silly Earth LIES! I have studied your language for all of the six miserable years that I have lived here. I KNOW A CODED MESSAGE WHEN I SEE ONE! I AM ZIM!"

"Yes you do, Zim, and yes you are," the pathetic human sighed, turning to go back to his tiny, defenseless fortress. The disgusting worm had lost and had admitted defeat! ZIM HAD PREVAILED!

"After you 'decode' my secret message, do you mind bringing that back? I don't want to have to rewrite everything," he added as he opened the door to his room.

"I fail to see what use this would have after I discover all your planet's secret weaknesses that you have so carelessly written right here," I murmured to myself. "BUT! If I feel that there is no harm in doing so, then… yes, I will bring it back. Seeing how you and I are 'bestest friends' and all of that." I turned to leave, already having been stalled longer than planned. I reached behind my shoulder and pressed a small, central button on my PAK, signaling to GIR that my mission was successful and I was on my way to the base once more.

"I still don't understand how you can be my friend AND my enemy at the same time." This sniveling earth-creature always had some objection to my wishes to take over his filthy, germ-infested planet. What did anyone ever do to make him so loyal to the other awful creatures in this terrible place? They did not deserve him – if it were not for his clever thinking, Earth would have been taken over long ago, and yet they are all oblivious to his heroic actions, shunning him out of their society, calling him a 'freak' and other things much worse.

No matter… if the Dib wished it to be so, it would be so. He was a strange one, alright – with his odd trench-coat and his numerous useless contraptions and obsessive nature – but he made my work interesting (though difficult), and if saving this doomed little planet was what he wanted… well, then, saved it shall be. But that won't stop me from trying to take over. It is my job, after all. For an Irken elite, there can never be submission. ZIM WILL BEST HIM ONE DAY! But perhaps this paper would be the key to the Earth's demise.

"Zim?" Dib brought me out of my trance. "Hurry up and bring me back my homework after you're done. I'm serious. Then maybe we can go grab something to eat."

"What horrible Earth food could I possibly eat? Everything here on this planet is garbage… GARBAGE, I SAY! But, at any rate, I will be going now, and will be back later, so we can… argh! What's that thing that young adolescent worm-spawn do?"

"'Hang out?' "

"Ah, yes. Precisely."

And with that I left him, his overly-sized forehead wrinkled in confusion over what just happened, not knowing how close his planet's demise now was, with the paper – the key – in my hands. He shut the door to his home with a bang, and I could hear the sound of a lock mechanism being turned. I chuckled to myself as I ran back to the base, ignoring the strange glances I got from other passersby. I'd probably just forgotten to put in my contacts to disguise my big, red eyes that were so different from those of these humans. I often did, but nobody ever seemed to care that much. Everyone except for that Dib human believed that it was just a part of my 'skin condition' and was nothing to be alarmed about.

Oh, how very wrong they were.

I effortlessly pushed open the door to the base, greeted by my awful malfunctioning SIR unit, GIR. To this day, the stupid robot won't tell me what the G stands for. Not that I care.

"DID YOU BRING ME ANY TAQUITOS?" the small, silver trash-can of a machine inquired immediately.

"No, GIR, I have brought you no taquitos," I replied. He asked me this every day. ZIM WON'T STAND FOR IT MUCH LONGER, DAMNIT. IT'S VERY ANNOYING. "I am taking _ this_–" I held up the paper, with the coded message scrawled on the surface- "to the lab to be decoded and analyzed. When I return, I expect the doors and windows to be shut and locked. I'm getting very tired of chasing out squirrels, GIR."

"But they're my friends –"

"NO 'BUTS,' GIR. I AM YOUR MASTER!"

"Yes, my lord!" The annoying thing saluted in obedience, his eyes turning a vicious red for a moment before reverting to their normal aqua-blue.

"Good. Now, begone! I have much to do." I pulled open a drawer on a small desk and stepped back as it moved out of the way, revealing a large circular disk on the floor. I stepped onto it and was instantly plummeted to the bottom floor of my secret lair, ready to begin.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IT'S NOT A SECRET CODE?" I yelled at the monitor, which was displaying the results of the analyzation of the Dib human's paper.

"I'm sorry, sir." A computerized voice filled the lab from an unknown speaker. Ah, my computer. So much less annoying than that stupid, defective GIR. I had taken a long time to upgrade the computer so that it had a personality of its own; it was something to talk to when Dib decided to get angry and ignore me because I want to conquer his people. "I scanned this message and attempted to translate it into every language in the known universe and only one made sense: Spanish."

"WHAT IS THIS 'SPANISH' YOU SPEAK OF?" I demanded. I was mad. I stole that paper for nothing? No. It can't be. ZIM DOES NOT MAKE MISTAKES!

"Spanish, or Espanol, is a language that originated from the Latin language and is spoken mainly in Earth's Mexico, Spain, and most of South America –"

"But that paper! What does it say?"

"It reads: 'Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492. The native people believed that the new arrivals had come from the sky, instead of from across the ocean. Did they think this because they had been visited before, or –'"

"ENOUGH. I am most troubled and disappointed by this. It must be merely a report for Dib's foreign language class after all."

"Just in case you'd like to know, it was done on 85% recycled newspaper and a 2 graphite pencil was used to write the message, handwriting most resembling the font 'Monotype Corsiva.'"

"I don't care, computer. Stop this drivel at once." My personalized touch to the computer hadn't been completely successful, and I still had a few bugs to work out… such as teaching it when to stop blathering about nothing of any particular importance. "Now, retrieve the message for me so that I can return it to Dib like I promised."

"Yes, sir. Why do you bother with that human, anyway?"

"Silence, computer! The boy intrigues me. Though of different races and having different motives, both of us are intelligent; we both have no true real family (although more so myself- my mother was a robotic arm); we have both experienced the pain of rejection by our peers; we both wish to show our superiors that we are not worthless or stupid. We are one of the same."

As I rode my elevator back to the top floor of the base, I looked at myself in the reflection, my once short body now taller and straighter than when I had first come to Earth, and my dark red eyes clouded while I pondered over what I had said to the computer.

"Yes… the same…"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

I drummed my fingers on my desk, waiting for Zim to return with my homework. He was always barging into my house and taking things, thinking that they would do some good in his quest for world domination. But he never listened to me– he just went ahead and did what he wanted. This was okay, since he never actually did any harm. I've foiled his plans often enough that he should realize that I'm smarter than he is. Maybe he did. But his stupid ego is too big to fit inside his head and pays no attention anyway. Stupid Zim. Stupid Zim with his stupid plans to take over this stupid planet. But, at any rate, we're on good terms now. Six years is a long time to be constant rivals. As earlier today may have suggested, we still have a few problems. But our huge fights have turned into harmless bickering since we first met, that terrifying day at Skool, and it's refreshing to have somebody to talk to, since nobody else pays any attention to me.

I looked up quickly when I heard a furious banging on the door.

"Dib! Dib! Open the door! Please, Dib, hurry! Your filthy human sister is coming to destroy me… ZIM REQUIRES YOUR ASSISTANCE– "

I unlocked my door and opened it in a flash. A terrified Zim flew through inside with an angry purple-haired girl following closely behind. I slammed the door in her face and relocked it before she could tear it open again.

"Let me at him, Dib," she growled, pounding against the flimsy, wooden door. "He ran into me and made me lose my game. You know the rules– he must pay."

"Maybe later, Gaz," I replied sarcastically. My sister was pretty insane when it came to her GameSlave. I paused for a minute as the hammering died down. I waited until I heard her footsteps, along with the bleeps and bloops of her GameSlave, fade away before I turned to look back at Zim.

Zim cringed in the corner of my room, his thin, delicate, gloved arms shielding his face. He glanced up nervously for a moment, his eyes (now a humanly blue, thanks to his contacts) wide as if he expected Gaz to break the door down and come in after him. His black wig had fallen off; his antennae were exposed and pinned to his head in terror. Gaz was the only thing I knew of that made Zim for his life– and I have studied him intensely.

"It's okay," I reassured. "Gaz is very bad-tempered but she gives up if she can't immediately kill you. She's gone now; you're fine."

Zim visibly sighed, dropping his arms. "Thank you, Dib-human. Zim is eternally grateful to you for helping him to escape your crazed sister once again." I found it interesting how he spoke in the third person at times. "Here– a gift."

He reached into the pocket of his pitch-black pants and pulled out a slightly-crumpled piece of paper; it was my Spanish homework, of course. I decided not to remind him that he'd promised to give it back to me anyway, and accepted it without complaint.

"Thanks," I said, putting it back on my desk. "Were the results of any use to you?"

Picking up his wig and placing it back on top of his head, he stared at me crossly. "No," he admitted. His gaze then softened thoughtfully. "But I think I may have learned to trust you slightly better."

"Good," I muttered in annoyance. "I'm tired of you thinking I'm lying to you all the time. I may not want you to take over Earth, but you're also my friend, and lying's not what friends do."

"I see."

"Anyway, do you want to go do something like I suggested earlier? We could catch a movie or go down to the arcade, or whatever."

"I know not of this 'what-ever,' but if you have no objection I would like to go for a walk in one of your Earth parks," Zim replied, tucking in his red-and-black shirt. Even after all these years, that was virtually all he wore. "It will be getting dark soon, yes? I enjoy looking at your night sky's many constellations– I can even show you the star that my home planet orbits if we can go to my base and get one of my more powerful telescopes first."

"We can't use one of mine?"

"You amuse me, Dib," Zim scoffed. "There's not a human-made telescope that would be able to view stars that distant. Now, let us go, Diblet."

He pulled my arm, leading me out my room, already having forgotten about his earlier incident with Gaz. Good thing she was back in her room, safely out of our way, or there would have been trouble.

Zim had never before shown any interest in going to the park, but it was a great idea. A mile or two from my house was a little park that was almost always deserted after 4:00 in the afternoon– we could go there without worrying about Zim needing to keep on his disguise. This in itself was a good thing, because– I hate to admit it– his fake, blue eyes are not as nice as his natural crimson ones, and– another thing I hate to admit– I much preferred his two curling antennae to the dry, dusty wig that he wore.

"MASTER, YOU'RE BACK!" GIR cried as we entered Zim's home. "Hiya, Dib!" he added as he spotted me. GIR's hyperactively playful smile made me laugh.

"Hi, GIR," I responded. The robot giggled as he closed the door behind us and childishly held out his mechanical hand to me, expecting something. I knew what it was.

"Here you go," I said, reaching into my back pocket and producing a small piece of candy. I handed it to him and watched, amused, as his eyes filled with tears of joy.

"Th-thank you," GIR sobbed, carefully untwirling the yellow wrapper and tossing it aside. He stuffed the round candy into his mouth and beamed at me as I walked into the small, hidden, compact tube-elevator with Zim. As the door closed, GIR ran up and screamed, "I LOVE YOU, DIB-MONKEY!"

"He's an enthusiastic little guy, isn't he?" I remarked to Zim as the elevator went down into the lower levels of Zim's hideout.

"Yes– too much for my liking," the Irken muttered. "Far too much."

Zim and I had spent more time in his base than we'd originally planned. The Irken alien had to dig through piles and piles of equipment in order to find his prize– his portable telescope. It looked like a toy to me, when I saw it at first: it looked as if the parts were molded from a modified, strengthened plastic, similar to a lot of the knickknacks that you find small children playing with and/or gnawing on. As an added bonus… it was tiny. No wonder it took so long for Zim to find it. But despite these things, I had no doubt that it could see into deep space.

"Please refrain from hiding my telescope from me in the future, GIR," Zim ordered to the little robot.

GIR blinked. "But it looked at me funny."

Zim decided it would be best to ignore this. "Never mind. Come Dib; I wish to be at the park before the moon rises."

"Oh– okay."

So we stepped outside and Zim made sure that the door to his base was securely locked, and then we were off.

We walked along the side of the road at a slightly fast pace. Zim had put his disguise back on– just in case someone was out for a late stroll. But we saw no-one, not even after we'd entered the park gates. So after looking around one last time, Zim removed his contacts and wig.

The Invader sighed. "I am always glad to be rid of these things," he complained, rubbing his eyes. "It gets very itchy while wearing them."

I could sympathize. "That's why I wear glasses."

From the park entrance to where we were going– a small grassy hill that had a clear view at the sky– would be another few minutes to get to by foot. We started talking about something... it must not have been very important, since I can't remember what it was. It did, however, turn into a bit of an argument, as usual.

During this time the sky had grown dark and the stars had come out; neither of us noticed, since we were too busy quarrelling, until we reached the edge of the trees. We both looked up; the heavens were blazing a bright white, and it almost looked like the entire sky was swirling. Its sheer beauty shocked us both into silence and we slowly walked up the hill without taking our eyes from the wondrous sight in front of us.


End file.
